Leave on or shut off

Ah, the age-old question and I'm wondering what the latest thinking is.

I have a Dell Dim 2400 system.

We generally put it on about 9:00 AM and leave it on. We use it about 3-6
hours sporadically during the day. At other times, it just sleeps and the
screen is dark. At about midnight, I shut off the system. This means it
might sit idle for maybe 3-6 consecutively.

So my question: if I expect quite a few hours of non-use during the day,
should I shut it off. (In fact, should I shut it off at night)?

Mel

 

mine is on 24 hours a day. I reboot about one a week.

Yvon

 

I leave my on 24/7, the only time I turn it off is when I go on trips

 

Depends how much you're paying for electricity...

BT

 

Good point, how much does it cost to run a Dimension 2400 for a day?

Assume that the monitor is in energy saving mode when not in use,
let's say 18 hours a day.

 

someone once told me it is better to leave your system on. they said that
the solder on the board experienced expansion and contraction from heating
up and cooling down causing cold solder joints. whatever, i leave mine on
24/7. i just clean it out about twice a month. the fan sucks in alot of
crap. especially hair from my pets, nasty!

 

Also factor in cooling during the summer as the unit throws off heats.

Lastly, factor in the pollution generated from the wasted power...

 

Factor in the savings in heating during the winter.

Factor in the reduction in pollution due to fewer systems thrown away
as a result of failure.

 

Non sequitur.
Leaving it on doesn't cause failure.
Turning it off doesn't cause failure.

 

I turn my computer on when I wake up in the morning, and turn it off
when I go to bed at night.

 

There are other issues to consider too, of course.

For example, from about October through March the ambient temperature
in my "computer room" at home is likely to be above specs for at least
a couple of hours each day, so I don't leave my home machine running.

Conversely, in the air-conditioned office I don't leave the machine
running overnight because of the danger of electrical faults and,
especially, lightning strikes during summer months. And I turn it
off during the day too, when storms are around.


Cheers, Phred.

 

Why not put it on "Standby" ???????

 

standby isn't really the best choice for a desktop. it was a power setting
designed for notebooks, and in most cases I've never seen it implemented
well in any desktop. if you're going to set it in such a low power
consumption mode, wait the extra 30 seconds to 1 minute it takes to do a
full boot up. you'll have a much more stable system as a result.

 

I would have agreed with that on a Win9x box, but XP does standby pretty
well even on a desktop. It has the advantage of bringing everything back up,
apps and all.

Tom

 

I agree. I never shut my computer down now; I only use standby. Never had
a problem with it, and I can bring it out of standby in about 5 seconds.

 

I leave mine on 24/7. I was concerened about AC line tranisients, brownouts,
AC hits during storms, etc. so I bought an APC UPS to take care of that
worry. We seem to get a lot of line transients in Northern VA. The UPS works
with the PC to shut it down in an orderly fashion if power is off for more
than 10-15 minutes.

 

Fair enough. I've thought of getting one of those too. But I still
have the problem of daily ambients commonly exceeding the specified
max of 35C during October-March. So I normally shutdown, turn off,
and unplug both power and modem connections. (Just paranoid.


Cheers, Phred.

 

I think it's time for you to upgrade to XP. Takes only about 2 sec to
standby and 2 sec to reactivate.

 

I've got a Dimension 4300S and an Optiplex GX60 which have been using
standby for over six months now without any problems. (The 4300S was
running 24/7 and I wanted to reduce power consumption).

At least the GX60 was designed to use standby as it has the "Energy
Star" label.

 

i totally agree there when u power off and on again the system is more
stable than when used in the stanby mode...i never shut my pc down....but
for energy saving i let the monitor power down and let the hard drive power
down also